Abstract:
Regards Sur La Politique Linguistique Educative Au Ghana: Perceptions Et This research work proposes a double-edged approach of sociolinguistics and social psychology to explore representations of families vis-à-vis language learning, and in particular of English, French, and Ghanaian languages, in a plurilingual Ghanaian educational context. It aims at understanding global issues on the educational management of plurilingualism in Ghana while drawing on two case studies, located in Aflao and Ejisu, in southern and central Ghana. These qualitative studies are "validated" by a quantitative survey in several schools in the capital city of Accra.
The questioning retained concerns the links of coherence existing between the sociolinguistic situation in Ghana, the linguistic educational policies and the practices and representations of the families in relation to languages and individual multilingualism. These different levels of analysis are linked by means of a contextualization process that highlights certain specificities of social and family multilingualism in Ghana. More specifically, this research questions the place of French in the panorama of family language policy in Ghana, as well as the modalities of its teaching and the representations associated with it. The reflection led to some perspectives for a better recognition of multilingual practices in families, and a real consideration of the problems related to the contact of languages and varieties present in the social environment in which French tries to insert itself with so many problems.
The results of the study show that the families in Aflao make a lot of effort to support their desire/need to add French as a third language in the linguistic basket that their children bring to the "sociolinguistic market", unlike the Akan of Ejisu who do not care about this language that is not very present in their daily framework or their vision of the future. The will of the Ewés, moreover, seems to lead inevitably to the decline of the practice of their local language, in Aflao, near the Togolese border. Indeed, the pressure of poverty, economic life and the sociolinguistic environment (need and presence of French at the border) seems to dominate and determine the attitudes and practices of these families in terms of education and family language choices.
